his classical system. This oratorical form, in which Pope com presses his thought like La Bruyère, magnifies the force and swing of vehement ideas; like a narrow and straight canal, it collects and dashes them in their right direction; there is then nothing which their impetus does not carry away; and it is thus Lord Byron from the first, in the face of hostile criticisms, and over jealous reputations, has made his way to the public.1 Thus Childe Harold made its way. At the first onset every man who read it was agitated. It was more than an author who spoke; it was a man. In spite of his denial, the author was identified with his hero: he calumniated himself, but still it was himself whom he portrayed. He was recognized in that young voluptuous and disgusted man, ready to weep amidst his orgies, who "Sore sick at heart, And from his fellow bacchanals would flee; Apart he stalk'd in joyless reverie, And from his native land resolved to go, And visit scorching climes beyond the sea; With pleasure drugg'd, he almost long'd for woe. Fleeing from his native land, he carried, amongst the splendors and cheerfulness of the south, his unwearying persecutor, "demon thought," implacable behind him. The scenery was recognized: it had been copied on the spot. And what was the whole book but a diary of travel? He said in it what he had seen and thought. What poetic fiction is so valuable as genuine sensation? What is more penetrating than confidence, voluntary or involuntary? Truly, every word here expressed an emotion of eye or heart: "The tender azure of the unruffled deep. . . The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown'd All these beauties, calm or imposing, he had enjoyed, and sometimes suffered through them: and hence we see them through 1 Thirty thousand copies of the Corsair were sold in one day. 2 Byron's Works, viii.; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. i. 6. his verse. Whatever he touched, he made palpitate and live because when he saw it, his heart had beaten and he had lived. He himself, a little later, quitting the mask of Harold, took up the parable in his own name; and who is not touched by an avowal so passionate and complete? "Yet must I think less wildly:-I have thought "But soon he knew himself the most unfit Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held "Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, Could he have kept his spirit to that flight To which it mounts, as if to break the link That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. "But in Man's dwellings he became a thing Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat."1 Such are the sentiments wherewith he surveyed nature and history, not to comprehend them and forget himself before them, but to seek in them and impress upon them the image of his own passions. He does not leave objects to speak of themselves, but forces them to answer him. Amidst their peace, he is only occupied by his own emotion. He attunes them to his soul, and compels them to repeat his own cries. All is inflated here, as in himself; the vast strophe rolls along, carrying in its overflowing bed the flood of vehement ideas; declamation unfolds itself, pompous, and at times artificial (it was his first work), but potent, and so often sublime that the rhetorical rubbish, which he yet preserved, disappeared under the afflux of splendors, with which it is loaded. Wordsworth, Walter Scott, by the side of this prodigality of accumulated splendors, seemed poor and dull: never since Æschylus was seen such a tragic pomp; and men followed with a sort of pang, the train of gigantic figures, whom he brought in mournful ranks before their eyes, from the far past; "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! "She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was!—her daughters had their dowers "Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands, 1 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. iv. 1 and 2. Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done; To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. "By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see (For one who hath no friend, no brother there) Their various arms that glitter in the air! What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair, "What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. "And thus they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage Bleed gladiator-like and still engage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree." 2 Has ever style better expressed a soul? It is seen here laboring and expanding. Long and stormily the ideas boiled within this soul like bars of metal heaped in the furnace. They melted there before the strain of the intense heat; they mingled therein their heated mass amidst convulsions and explosions, and then at last the door is opened; a slow stream of fire descends into the trough prepared beforehand, heating the circumambient air, and its glittering hues scorch the eyes which persist in looking upon it. III. Description and monologue did not suffice Byron; and he needed, to express his ideal, events and actions. Only events try 2 Ibid. c. iv. 93 and 94 1 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. i. 39 and 40. the force and elasticity of the soul; only actions display and regulate this force and elasticity. Amidst events he sought for the most powerful, amidst actions the strongest; and we see appear successively The Bride of Abydos, The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, Parisina, The Siege of Corinth, Mazeppa, and The Prisoner of Chillon. I know that these sparkling poems have grown dull in forty years. In their necklace of Oriental pearls have been discovered beads of glass; and Byron, who only half loved them, judged better than his judges. Yet he judged amiss; those which he preferred are the most false. His Corsair is marred by classic elegancies: the pirates' song at the beginning is no truer than a chorus at the Italian Opera; his scamps propound philosophical antitheses as balanced as those of Pope. A hundred times ambition, glory, envy, despair, and the other abstract personages, whose images in the time of the first Empire the French used to set upon their drawing-room clocks, break in amidst living passions. The noblest passages are disfigured by pedantic apostrophes, and the pretentious poetic diction sets up its threadbare frippery and conventional ornaments.2 Far worse, he studies effect and follows the fashion. Melodramatic strings pull his characters at the right time, so as to obtain the grimace which shall make his public shudder: "Who thundering comes on blackest steed, . . . Approach, thou craven crouching slave, Wretched mannerisms, emphatic and vulgar, imitated from Lucan and our modern Lucans, but which produce their effect only on a first perusal, and on the common herd of readers. There is an infallible means of attracting a mob, which is, to shout out loud; with shipwrecks, sieges, murders, and combats, we shall always interest them; show them pirates, desperate adventurers, 1 For example, "as weeping Beauty's cheek at Sorrow's tale." Here are verses like Pope, very beautiful and false: "And havock loath so much the waste of time, She scarce had left an uncommitted crime. One hour beheld him since the tide he stemm'd, Destroying, saving, prison'd, and asleep!" |